Anyone else having trouble with macro'ing crows / focus fire ? When ever i put crows below beastial wrath in my macro it doesn't use the ability...and I can't get focus fire to work at all in a macro i've just got it bound separately.

Focus Fire is on the global cooldown... of course you can't macro it with anything else that causes a global cooldown (like crows). you can only use 1 gcd cast per macro. also, if I remember right, if the macro encounters another gcd-causing /cast attempt in it, it just stops execution right there and everything below that line is just ignored. this will happen even if there are conditionals which return false... they basically don't want you to EVER put 2 gcd causing abilities in the same macro, outside of /castsequence and /castrandom. this is probably what happens when you change the order in your macro.

but why would you macro ff with anything at all anyway? I can understand BW and Crows because they're both 1 min I guess (a macro with just these two will work 100% btw), but ff is something you want to use manually

The best thing is to try and get stacks before you engage in combat (sending your pet in and sitting behind pillar). After you engage in combat, you should clean off your targets with tranq, get your cc out (+50 focus) , focus fire at whatever stacks you managed (hopefully 4-5) then BW, Crows, KC, (barrage if target is alone/near 1 other target), arcane shot / tranq, KC repeat). Focus Fire buff lasts 20 seconds and usually take another 30 seconds to build to the 4-5 range. So basically I use my second Focus fire when there's 30-40 seconds left on the CD of my BW Crows(depends on stacks once again), this is because after I use it, I'll start building my stacks up again for the next burst combo.

tldr use it at 5 no matter what, and try to have at least a 3 stack focus fire for every BW

keep in mind that focus fire doesn't stop the pet from getting frenzy stacks, and it goes faster with more haste. frenzy is 4% per stack, but gives 6% per stack to focus fire. that's why using at 5 is always worth it, you're quite likely to end up with at least like 3 when it runs out. you can use it 10 seconds before your BW also because its up for 20 seconds whereas BW is 10 sec long. if you're literally a few seconds away from aligning a 5 stack use with BW, it might be worth waiting, but generally you shouldn't.

frenzy and focus fire stack as well, so theoretically its possible to have 5 stacks of frenzy and a 5 stack focus fire up at the same time for ridiculous haste on the pet. if the stars align, you can have this together with BW. "10 seconds before BW" should be a key point in time for you basically, if you pop a 5 stack focus fire at exactly this point, you have a chance to pull off some really ridiculous shit.

also while the sending pet pre combat is an okay idea, its irrelevant until they fix the cornered abuse and hp on summon

In the opener, I use crows + BW to get some pressure out, by the time i have 5 stacks, i will usually have crows + bw back up, and on use still at hand, at this point it's either land cc and start the burst (which is a shit ton) where i use frenzy stacks first, then the rest with a macro, OR i wait for trinket proc + weapon enchant if my partner isnt ready or cc isnt off cd/dr, i dont know if frenzy has to be used before applying crows, because they made some changes to snapshotting and also some exceptions (ferals) where u have to use (i think tf) before putting on bleeds so they become stronger, but at the same time ur dots become stronger if they're already applied and u use on use for example... i always use frenzy first just to be safe

for those people abusing the low health pet with taking off your gear, it might be alot better using on use at the start aswell to force as many defs as u can, or save on use and hope your pet doesnt die for the next minute or so... or simply dont bug ur pets health at all

i am sure there is no snapshotting involved because if that was the case, pve theorycrafters would know/talk about it (yes i follow all of that shit). also i hear people say that the feral mechanic is literally the ONLY case of snapshotting left the in the game. if you're ingame you can just put crows on a dummy, check ticks, press on-use trinket, check ticks...

fuck trinket proc, just get 2x on-use trinkets and have one up for every set of 1 min cds =)

Might be going off on a small tangent, but how does dire beast dps stack with focus fire and on that note, is dire beast worth using over Toth at All when bursting?

Dire Beast is great in my opinion, with Tranq shot being 50 focus now. I generally cast it on cd or use it just before bursting so i can actually use my tranq button without starving myself. Rank 1 hunter EU uses it also.

Dire Beast is great in my opinion, with Tranq shot being 50 focus now. I generally cast it on cd or use it just before bursting so i can actually use my tranq button without starving myself. Rank 1 hunter EU uses it also.